CHAPTER ONE

Knowing Marjorie, she’s far too preoccupied with her own troubles to see the little girl has troubles too. It’s only been three weeks since I died, “abandoning” Marj in Wisconsin’s Last Wilderness, as our tiny town of Winegar is so aptly called, and now all she can think about is returning to civilization. Living without me, my dear wife is beginning to realize, will take friends, courage and money, and Marjorie Thane is lacking in all three.  

She’s been consoling herself with food and drink (mostly drink) and now the cupboard is bare: peanut butter, chicken noodle soup, Nutella, gone; my little orange cheese crackers and the Toasted Head, gone and gone. The only thing left is a jar of spaghetti sauce with a lid that will not budge. Testament to her helplessness, Marj has hidden it away in the broom closet because the sight of it makes her cry. 

When she and Harriet, our yellow Lab, left for the market around ten this morning, the swing set, standing near the entrance to Grand Manitou Estates, was empty. But now, when she returns, it’s not. She stops and watches the little girl, who appears to be six or seven, wind herself up in a sort of chain link cocoon and rise higher and higher until just the toe of one muddy, white rubber boot touches the ground. Then closing her eyes, the child lifts that boot, breaks her tenuous connection to earth, and surrenders to the thrill of centrifugal force. Two long blond braids sail out from her head like wings, and seeing this, Marjorie smiles. She’s partial to girls because we never had any, only boys, and for that she blames me. She wanted one more chance to try for a daughter, and regretfully, I didn’t give it to her.  

In any case, there’s a wonderful moment in young lives—the moment right before the sprained ankle or broken wrist—when many believe they can fly. Marjorie, familiar with that moment, inches along, fearful the girl will suddenly leap off the swing and into the path of the Subaru. Lots of kids come and go at Grand Manitou, especially during the summer months, and even though my wife is acquainted with many of the young “Manitousians,” as we call ourselves, I can see by the tilt of her brows that she doesn’t recognize this particular one. I don’t either, and neither, evidently, does Harriet, who’s poking her nose out the backseat window, trying to get a good whiff.

Marj rolls down her window. “Hello there,” she calls. “I’m Mrs. Thane, like windowpane. Who are you?” The girl ignores her, goes right back to her winding. Despite cheeks chapped to the color of raspberries, and a rope of mucous running from nose to lips, this child is a beauty, one as rare as the albino deer that’s been spotted in the area lately. Still, if Marjorie were to take a closer look, I think the eyes would tell her something is not quite right. Though the same deep blue of a cloudless sky, they’re as vacant as Dick’s, my prize buck, whose head hangs above the fireplace in the cottage.  

“Where’s your mother?” Marjorie shouts. The girl responds by glancing over at June Bug, one of the small cottages up near the road. A metallic green Buick Skylark—2001 or 2002—is parked outside with a black and silver sticker on its rusty bumper proclaiming: Snow Makes Me Wet! “So, your mother’s a friend of Walter’s?” The girl, now seconds away from the next spin, doesn’t reply, so Marj eases her foot off the brake and continues down the hill, left to ponder the caretaker’s love life. 

Our cottage, Little Firefly, ironically the largest of the seven that make up Grand Manitou Estates, sits closest to the shores of Papoose Lake. There’s also June Bug, as I’ve mentioned, Ladybug, Cricket and the Flies: Butter, May and Dragon. When Marj pulls up, she just sits there glaring up at my antique canoe paddle, as if it were me hanging over the back door. “God almighty, George,” she says, “Who, in their right mind is ever going to buy this place?” 

What can I say? I’m not a fortuneteller. I am…or was only a professor of logic down at the University in Madison (for all the good logic ever does anyone).  

She throws the car into park, gets out and opens the hatch for Harriet. Harriet, who’s sixty in dog years—only five years younger than I used to be—takes off after Vince, a mischievous red squirrel with one nibbled off ear. Marj gathers up as many bags as she can, climbs the steps to the backdoor and stops, as if waiting for me to materialize. Finally, sighing loudly, she puts down the bags, frees her fingers from all the twisted loops, digs out the key from her purse and unlocks the door. “This is for the birds,” she says, and she’ll get no argument from me.  

After the groceries are squared away, she finds the receipt in the bottom of one of the bags: it’s a real doozy; must be a good three or four feet long. Marj has never paid much attention to the little numbers printed on these things, but now that has to change. She unfurls it, slides a finger down, down, down right past the total, to the savings: $3.72, and smiles. This is probably just the sort of economic vigilance Vern, the guy at the bank, had in mind. In fact, I can almost see her squeezing a little reminder into that crowded mental file of hers—Who wrote the song “A Boy Named Sue?” What does M&M stand for? How many grooves on the edge of a dime?—to mention it to him the next time he calls.  

He “reached out” yesterday to tell her he’s sorry I’m gone. Oh, and while he had her, it was, possibly, as good a time as any to talk about the future. You know, financial planning.

“What?” she said. “A budget? What’s wrong? Did George take it with him after all?” She laughed a nervous little laugh—ha, ha—and moved into the great room where she collapsed onto the sofa, picked up the needlepoint pillow she made for my back—If you shake the family tree, a few nuts will fall out—and smelled it. “Yes, of course, I’m aware of the medical bills. I was one of the people…you know, being medicated. And George’s condition, his cardiomyopathy? Well, FYI: removing part of a heart isn’t cheap…or safe, as it turned out, and, wouldn’t you know, he was six lousy weeks away from Medicare. What? Really? That’s it? Those are some mighty impressive math skills, Vern. I guess that’s why you’re the banker and I’m the…the—” she closed her eyes as if the word pained her. She couldn’t say it, hasn’t said it yet; maybe she never will. Marj is fifty-six, far too young to be a…a you-know-what. “Yes. I understand. I will be vigilant. Maybe I’ll go back to work at the Pioneer Press. You like that idea? Good. So, there’s really no need to worry, Vern. Plus, George left me a little nest egg. Yes, I know, nest eggs are only for emergencies, which this isn’t…is it? No? Then don’t scare me. Now have a great day. Good bye.”

I held my breath, figuratively speaking, of course, and watched Marj move slowly back into the kitchen, as if she were drifting through a dense fog, to park the phone in the charger. Vern’s words bothered her. Was he telling her that it was possible to lose everything—that is, to lose even more—and become homeless? There are “the boys.” Well, there were; now there’s only Wendell, who is not a boy anymore, but a full-grown man with a life of his own. And knowing Marjorie, she’d rather live in a refrigerator box under a viaduct than impose on him and Helen. 

“Oh, George…” She drops her head into her hands. “How did this even happen? No life insurance. No health insurance now. A tiny pension and a little in savings, yes. But I thought your Social Security would make me feel slightly more…you know, secure.” She crumples up the receipt in a tight ball and tosses it into the garbage; this budget business is going to take some getting used to. And suddenly, she’s up and out the door. She’s flinging open the hatch of the car and tearing into a new case of Toasted Head, she’s grabbing a bottle by the neck and yanking it out. And for the first time since my demise, I’m almost glad I’m not standing there beside her.  

Marj sets the bottle of wine down on the kitchen table and looks at the happy dancing bear on the label fondly, a little like the way she sometimes looked at me. “Okay,” she says, quickly stashing it away in the fridge. “I’ll wait. I’ll wait and ration and make it last.” She wanders into the bedroom and comes out wearing my green Packer sweatshirt. She takes a spin around the great room, fluffs the couch cushions, straightens a picture of a racoon, and returns to the kitchen where she’s just about to open the refrigerator when she hears someone knocking at the back door. 

“Ugh,” she moans. She wants to be left alone. Ordering Harriet to sit and stay, she holds her breath as if that will make her disappear. And I suppose if she holds it long enough, she will. 

A car is idling just outside, and curiosity gets the best of Marj. Keeping low, she slinks over to the backdoor window. There’s the little girl from the swings, gripping a pink plastic lunchbox in one hand, and the hand of a tall, slim, stunning blond in the other. The blond has big blue eyes and a smile as great as the great Northwoods, and she’s wearing a pink sweater that appears to have shrunk a size or two in the wash, cut low enough to reveal a tiny purple violet tattooed above her left breast; black jeans cling to her like a second skin. (Yes, I’m married, but I’m not…well okay, I am. But still…) There’s just one flaw that I can see: a smooth white scar, about a half inch long, sitting like a half moon atop her right cheekbone. 

Marj’s eyes meet the little girl’s just long enough for her to see what I saw hours ago: the child looks different in some way I can’t quite put my finger on. When she opens the door, she notices that the idling car is the same old green Buick she saw earlier, parked outside Walter’s cottage. “May I help you?” 

“Sure can!” the woman replies. “I’m Lorraine Jelinski. And this here’s my baby, Skye. We’re bunkin’ up in June Bug…for now…long story, you know. But I was wondering if maybe, just this once, you could look after Skye for a little—”

“I’m sorry, but this is not a good time, Lorraine,” Marjorie tells her. “You see, my husband—”

“Didn’t you just ask if you could help?”

“Yes, but..”

“Then…”

“Why me?”

“Oh, that’s easy. ‘Cause I asked my Dad who’s the nicest person here, at Grand Manitou, and he said, ‘Marjorie Thane.’”  

Marj frowns. “Walter’s your father?”

“Sure is.”

Marjorie likes Walter. He’s a quiet man, big and strong—proof that sixty is the new fifty—uncomplicated and honest. She likes him in that indiscriminate way women have of liking men they sense are alone and needy, like stray dogs. He always has a smile for her, which is easy for a man who’s not the husband, and, yes, I sometimes felt a little twinge of jealousy about that; I’m able to admit that now. That and the fact that he’s living the life—not to mention he’s actually living—the outdoor life, the man’s-man life that I always dreamed of living, tried to live, but for which I never quite had the knack…or the strength. Walter’s opinion, unlike some others’, means something to Marj, and so she finally agrees. 

Lorraine flashes that smile, assures her Skye won’t be any trouble, says she’ll be back “oh, around 4:30-ish.” Then she scurries off as if she’s just received a stay of execution from the governor.

“Come in, Skye,” Marjorie says, stepping aside, waving her in. The little girl lunges forward, stumbling over the threshold, scraping the toes of her white rubber boots across the old pine floor, one painful squeak after the other, leaving a trail of muddy footprints in her wake. Without looking up, she begins to speak in a strange, high-pitched voice that makes me think the kid must be terrified. “I’m Starrider. Starrider lives in the volcanoes of the Congo and eats mostly insects, baloney sandwiches and coffee.”

Marjorie glances at her watch—my watch, actually, which she’s begun to wear—1:03; it’s going to be a long afternoon. “There’s nothing wrong with the occasional insect,” she says. “In fact, I’ve swallowed a few myself. Ants, for instance, are considered a delicacy, like insect caviar, if you know what I mean, in India. But coffee isn’t good for you. It’ll stunt your growth.” 

Skye replies by zipping her jacket: down, up, down, up, zip, zip…zip, zip. 

“So…” 

Zip, zip…zip, zip. 

“Want to watch TV?”

Zip, zip…zip, zip.

“Skye?” 

“Starrider,” she says, finally, looking up, not directly at Marjorie, but a little sideways, so her eyes land somewhere in the vicinity of my wife’s left ear. “Please, call me Starrider.”  

“Okay.” Marjorie sighs, decides to play along. “Then I’ll be…Cloudgazer. How’s that? I’m Cloudgazer, and I live in…the Valley of the Shadow of Death.” 

“No.” Skye zips again—zip-zip, zip-zip—until she reaches some predetermined quota. Then she puts the lunchbox down on the floor, gently, as if it’s filled with eggs, wriggles out of her jacket, and goes up on her toes to flip it over my old blue windbreaker still hanging on the coat rack next to the door.  

“No, what?”  

“You’re Squirfu. Squirfu lives in the caves of Camaroon and eats mostly donuts, TV dinners and—” 

“Toasted Head. Do not forget the Toasted Head, not real human heads, as in noggins.” Marj smiles, points to hers. “It’s a kind of wine.”

“And Squirfu can puke electricity,” the child informs her. 

“Deal.” Marjorie makes a futile attempt to high-five. “That should save me a bundle in electric bills.” 

Skye kicks off her boots, arranges them neatly, side by side, under her jacket, then looks around, like a mini cat burglar casing the joint. When she spots Harriet, still sitting obediently next to the kitchen table, tail thumping wildly, she picks up the lunchbox, stumbles over and settles herself on the floor beside her. Harriet sniffs the child, evidently likes what she smells, and gives her a big wet kiss. “That’s Harriet,” Marjorie says. 

The child places one hand on top of Harriet’s head—but does not rename her—and then, with a quick, panic-stricken glance at Marj, she begins to rock back and forth, like a human metronome, singing softly to the beat: “Oh, Pokémon! Pokémon! Oh, Poké, Poké, Poké—” Suddenly, she stops, begins to gasp for air. Thick, painful wheezes fill the room, causing Harriet to look at Marj as if to say, “Do something!” This, Marjorie might tell you, is the reason we never had any more children after Davy. She’d say that children get sick, usually in the middle of the night, and before you can spell b-r-o-n-c-h-i-t-i-s, that’s exactly what you’re dealing with, and it’s an awful, helpless feeling.

“Can you reach your mother?” Marj asks, checking my watch again.  

Skye gasps, shakes her head, is just able to squeak out, “She’s too far away,” before the demon tightens its grip on her again. Harriet, recognizing an emergency, gets to her feet, readies herself for action. And, God love her, Marjorie knows exactly what to do because mothering must be a lot like riding a bike. Sprinting into the bathroom, she turns on the shower full blast, boosts the hot water all the way, slams the door shut, hurries back to Skye. 

“Save your breath, sweetie,” Marj says, and sliding her arms under Skye, lifts her off the floor. The child kicks, tries to free herself, but she’s just too ill to put up much of a fight. Rushing back into the bathroom, Marjorie sets her down gently on the rug, sweeps back the shower curtain, closes the door. As steam billows out, filling the tiny room, she tries to pull Skye onto her lap, but the child wants nothing of it. Marj tells her to relax, to take deep breaths, but she’s a stubborn one, won’t cooperate. It’s not until Skye manages to wheeze out “Harriet,” and Marj opens the door and lets Harriet in, that she finally surrenders.  

Marjorie rocks her like a baby. The pupils of Skye’s blue eyes constrict as she stares at the ceiling; her narrow chest heaves and caves with each new breath. Marj smiles down at her, tries to comfort her even though I know my wife is scared to death. My watch is pinned under the child, so all she can do is watch time creep by, in slow measured jerks, on Skye’s watch: a cheap thing with a peculiar yellow creature on its face, and Pokémon printed in raised letters on the pink plastic strap. We knew Star Wars, we knew Masters of the Universe, we knew Mr. Rogers, Big Bird and Bert and Ernie; Pokémon doesn’t mean a thing to Marjorie or me. Fearing the dreaded b-r-o-n-c-h-i-t-i-s, she lays the back of her hand on Skye’s forehead to check for fever, and frowns. She can’t tell; she’s out of practice. Knowing there’s a thermometer in the medicine cabinet over the sink, she stares up at the mirrored door, as if willing it to pop open so that slender stick of glass can leap off the shelf and swan dive into her hand, like something out of The Indian in the Cupboard, our sons’ favorite book. Marjorie has many talents, to be sure, but sadly, telekinesis isn’t one of them.  

Soon the hot water is gone, and the steam begins to disappear. As the bathroom cools, Marj checks Skye’s watch again, sees it’s only 3:07, and I can almost hear her blood coming to a boil. Where did Lorraine go? What kind of mother leaves a sick child with a virtual stranger? All Marj knows is that she’s Walter’s daughter, and snow makes her wet. Happily, though, Skye’s wheezing has eased and she has, quite literally, gotten a second wind. But when she realizes where she is, she arches her back, twists her body and rolls off of Marjorie onto the floor. 

“That’s the thanks I get for saving your life?” Marj says.

“Starrider was dying?” Skye asks, casting her a worried glance.  

“No darling, of course not, I was just being…stupid.”

“Stupid like Starrider.”

“Who says you’re stupid?”

“Everybody,” the child replies, slipping out of the bathroom. 

Marj shakes her head. “Well, everybody’s wrong.” 

Marjorie goes to the front door to let Harriet out, and when the child tries to follow, she says, no, Harriet won’t be long; she should go make herself comfortable in the great room. Skye’s lower lip begins to tremble ominously, but then she shrugs, grabs her lunchbox, trips her way onto the couch, and begins grumbling to someone named Alice, who isn’t there. Marj stands in the doorway watching, smiling. “When you get a chance, Starrider? Ask Alice if she knows my husband, George Thane, like windowpane. I talk to him all the time and he isn’t here, either…not anymore.”  

Skye clicks the latches on her lunchbox—click, click; click, click—as if she’s decided, perhaps for security reasons, to speak to Alice in Morse Code. “Squirfu can shoot ice bolts,” she says. “Squirfu has scaly skin and—” 

“No. Squirfu does not.” Marjorie pushes up the sleeve of my sweatshirt to double-check. “Where’d you leave your manners, Starrider? Back in the Congo?”

“Squirfu’s natural enemy is Humbar.”  

“No, sweetie. My natural enemy is time. And believe it or not, it’s your natural enemy 

too.” Marjorie attempts a playful pat on the top of Skye’s head, only to have the child shrink from her touch. “Okay, no problem,” she says, and moving over to the TV, tries to find a cartoon, maybe Sesame Street, but it appears the cable has gone kerflooey again, and she doesn’t know what to do. 

“Do I need a password?” she asks. 

Maybe. 

“Do I know the password?” 

It’s on a slip of paper in the kitchen drawer. 

“Maybe if I turn the TV off and then back on…?” 

Can’t hurt; might help. 

“Boy, I wish you were here, George.”   

That makes two of us, sweetheart.

Oddly enough, Skye doesn’t appear to care one way or the other about the TV. With anxious glances at the door, she gives her lunchbox latches a few more clicks, and after consulting Alice, opens it and brings out a pack of well-worn cards, like the baseball trading cards that used to come—maybe still do—wrapped with a dusty, dried out slab of bubblegum. She removes the rubber band and slowly deals four of them out across a couch cushion in what seems to be, for a six or seven-year-old, an obsessively straight row. Marj, intrigued, draws closer for a better view and sees that each card has a different cartoon creature —purple, blue, green, yellow—similar to the one on Skye’s watch: Weedle, Slugma, Gastly and Spoink. 

“What’s the object of the game?” Marj asks.

Skye shrugs again, gathers up the cards, taps them into a neat pile on her leg, then lays out four different ones; she looks like a gypsy preparing to read her Tarot cards: Whismur, Hoppip, Poliwag and Eevee. With a glance at the door, she says, “Harriet?”   

“Coming right up.” Marjorie lets Harriet in, and Harriet makes a bee-line to Skye and sits at her feet. Skye pulls out a bologna sandwich from her lunch box, unwraps it from a piece of wrinkled tin foil, smells it, opens her thermos, pours herself a cup of milk, smells that, and begins to eat. Now I’m wondering, as I’m sure Marj must be, if Lorraine ever had any intention of returning at four-thirty-ish. If she, in fact, has any intention of returning at all. 

Marjorie heads to the refrigerator, opens it and stands there contemplating: is it still too early for wine? Skye, seeing Marj’s back is turned, slips Harriet half her sandwich, and I’m here—wherever I am—to tell you, Harriet’s instantly in love. Meanwhile, Marj pulls out the cooled bottle of Toasted Head, grabs the wine bottle opener, which of necessity she has finally, and against all odds, mastered, and pours herself a nice big glass. Rationing be damned. Every day cannot possibly be as difficult as this one. Joining Skye in the great room, she says, “Salut, Starrider,” and taps her glass against Skye’s pink plastic cup. “Your mother’s a little late, isn’t she?”

“Foobar.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Her name’s Foobar.”

“I don’t care if her name is Hillary Rodham Clinton.” Marj flops down in my wingback chair beside the hearth. “She’s still a little late.”  

“Foobar can see in the dark.” Skye is massaging that sensitive place behind Harriet’s ear with one little socked foot, and Harriet’s eating it up, like she did the bologna sandwich. It certainly didn’t take her long to find a brand-new sucker to take my place.

“How do you know?”  

“Starrider hides at nighttime, and Foobar always finds her.”

Puzzled eyebrows, sip of wine. “Well, mothers do have eyes in the back of their heads, you know.” 

  Evidently this comes as news to Skye, and she, assuming as most children do that every woman is a mother, gets up and slowly circles Marj, trying to find the eyeballs embedded in my wife’s scalp. 

“Foobar can walk on water,” Skye adds, returning to the couch to realign her cards. 

“Are you sure she’s not waterskiing?”

“Yes.”

Marj stares up at Dick the Deer and sips her wine: sip, sip; sip, sip. A stack of old People magazines have piled up on the side table since I’ve been gone, and she grabs the top one, flips through. “I’ll probably stop subscribing,” she tells Skye. “Save some money. I have no idea who most of these people are anymore, anyway.” She takes the magazine to the girl and points to a picture. “For instance, do you know who this woman is?”

Skye glances over and says, “Beyonce.”

“Oh. I probably should have known that. I must be getting old.”

“Older is better.”

It sure beats the alternative.

“You kids,” Marj says. “You always want to be older. Well, I hate to tell you: it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. How old are you, by the way?”

“Six.” 

Marj smiles. “‘But now I’m six, I’m as clever as clever. I think I’ll stay six now forever and ever.’”  

Skye looks stricken. “Oh, no. Starrider can’t stay six forever, can she?”

“No, darling. It’s just a line from a poem I like, by a man named A.A. Milne,” Marj tells her, and much relieved, Skye goes back to her cards: Piplup. Lileep. Seedot and Buneary. 

Marjorie sips her way to an empty glass, checks the time, and when she discovers it’s nearly seven o’clock, she shakes her head, pushes herself to her feet, and goes back to the kitchen for a refill. On the way, she hears a knock at the door. “Well, it’s about time,” she mutters, swinging it open. 

“I can explain,” Lorraine says.

“I’m all ears,” a miffed Marj tells her.

“Nobody’s all ears, Squirfu.” Skye informs her.  

“Squirfu?” Lorraine says. “Oh, that’s a good one, baby.”  

Now Marj is ready to blow. I can tell by the way she purses her lips so tightly; I’m surprised a stream of gray smoke doesn’t shoot out of her nose. She ushers Lorraine into the kitchen, out of earshot of Skye. “Four-thirty-ish? In what time zone is your planet, Lorraine? And please tell me what was so almighty important that you’d leave a sick child with a person you hardly know for…for..” she counts the hours on her fingers, “six hours?”  

“She’s not sick.”

“Yes, she is. She couldn’t breathe. I had to steam her in the shower. I know this because one of my sons, Davy? He used to have very similar symptoms and… well, I’ll lay you bets it’s—”     

“You gamble?” Lorraine looks hopeful, and when Marjorie shakes her head, she says, “Too bad,” and goes on. “Anyways, to answer your question: I was feeling lucky, so I went to the casino, over in Lac du Flambeau.”  

“You’re kidding.”

“No. You do for me; I do for you. ‘What goes ‘round, comes ‘round.’ Ever hear that one? ‘Pay it forward?’ C’mon. You must’ve seen the movie.” Lorraine takes a deep breath, which makes her little violet rise and fall, and continues: “I started out pretty good too. I put a whole dollar—I’m usually a nickel gal—in the Triple Diamond machine, and ka-ching!” She pulls down the arm of an imaginary one-armed bandit. “You should’ve seen all those quarters tumbling into my cup: twenty-five bucks, right off the bat. I’m on a roll. Lorraine’s luck is changin’. So, I do it again and I lose, but that’s okay, it happens, right? I give it another spin and lose again and so it’s adios to the Triple Diamond. Nice knowin’ you. Lorraine J. is movin’ on. I still got twenty-three bucks, though, and it only takes one hit, so I slide on over to the Double Wild Cherry. I love wild cherry cough drops, don’t you, the ones with those guys with the beards on the box?” She closes her eyes and smiles, as if at this very moment she has one in her mouth. “And they, the cherries, I mean, just about line up perfectly a couple of times. For reals. They’re only the teeniest ways off. But Lorraine J. is no sucker, so I slide on over to the Haywire machine, and I got, I don’t know, a little…”  

“Screwed?”

“Pissed, actually. Good and pissed, and just kept putting the quarters in until they were gone. All the other machines are dinging away, but not mine. Lorraine J. is cursed.”

“You are not cursed, Lorraine,” Marj tells her. “The odds are against you, is all. The only people who get rich at the Lake of the Torches Casino are the Chippewa.”  

This is not what Lorraine J. wanted to hear. She collapses onto a kitchen chair, stares straight ahead. “The thing is, I really need the money, probably a lot more’n a lot of them.” It appears that she’s about to cry when suddenly, she looks up at Marj and brightens. “But you know what I always say?”  

“Not a clue.”

“I always say: tomorrow’s another day. Right?”

Sometimes, yes; sometimes, no.

Lorraine gives her sweater a yank to close the gap above her jeans, and gets to her feet, tells Skye it’s time to go. Skye clicks her lunchbox latches—click, click; click, click—and stays put. Her foot looks glued to Harriet’s head. “You’ll see Squirfu tomorrow. Isn’t that right, neighbor?” 

“And Harriet too?” the little girl asks.

“Who’s Harriet? Please tell me she’s not another one of them—”

“Harriet’s our…my dog,” Marj says.  

“Oh.” Lorraine’s expression broadcasts that she is not a lover of dogs. 

“Listen Lorraine. Maybe it’d best if we didn’t make a habit of this. You know, respect each other’s space?”  5,000 WORDS

“Hmm,” Lorraine pushes her lower lip out into a pout, allows two little tsks to escape. “Maybe Dad was wrong about you.”  

“No. Professor Sycamore can’t be wrong,” Skye tells Marj. “He’s the one sends Pokémon out on Big Adventures. Professor Sycamore lives in the Kalos Region and eats mostly meatballs, cows and kerosene.”

Lorraine leans over, whispers to Marjorie, “I swear to God! One of these days this Pokémon shit’s going to drive me completely nuts.”

“It will be a short trip,” Marjorie predicts, and when that sinks in, Lorraine does a double take, then erupts in laughter. And before long even Marj is struggling to keep a straight face. Not that I think I’ve suddenly been bestowed with superpowers, but I do sense there’s something, not phony, exactly, but forced about Lorraine, that beneath her spunky exterior there may be tiny chisels of despair chipping away. 

Finally regaining her composure, Lorraine says, “The kid’s in her own world, but you know what I keep thinking?”

“Not a clue.”

Lorraine runs a fingertip across her scar. “I keep thinking: who knows? Maybe her world is better’n ours. Hope so, anyways.”

“It’s been a rough day at the slots,” Marj says, and Lorraine nods, and Skye finally gathers up her cards and thermos, puts them, along with the tinfoil, folded into a perfect square, into the lunchbox and snaps the lid shut—click, click; click, click. Then after mumbling something to Harriet or Alice—it’s difficult to tell—she hops off the couch and hurries over to the coat rack. Up she goes on her toes again, flips her jacket off the hook, wriggles into it, slides into her boots, and just like that, they’re out the door and gone. 

“You’re welcome,” Marjorie mutters as she watches them drive away. 

She refills her glass again, grabs the new box of cheese crackers and plops down on the couch. “Now what?” she asks Harriet, who’s resting her head on the cushion where Skye sat. Marj stares at up at the Thane family artifacts lined up along the mantel: wood duck, perched for a dusty eternity on a piece of driftwood; a dried out mushroom, big as a plate, on which our younger son, Davy, drew a pretty good likeness of Little Firefly with a twig; a picture of Wendell, the oldest, and me holding up a forty-two inch musky between us.  

A person likes to wrap things up, put his life in order. So, when we knew the risks of the operation, I tried my best to cram years of information into just one week. I made a list of who to call if the furnace conked out, the hot water heater gave up, the electricity quit. I included the plumber’s number, although Marj does know how to stop a toilet from running. I made her memorize the combination to the safe. It holds all of our important documents: birth certificates, marriage license, passports, the titles to the Subaru and Little Firefly, Davy’s death certificate; and soon it will hold mine, if she can just remember that combination.  

She asked just one thing of me: to teach her how to build a fire. It was her only admission that she understood there was a good chance I wouldn’t make it. It isn’t pleasant to be reminded of one’s mortality, and I hesitated for a heartbeat before pointing to the starters in the brass pail beside the hearth, those things, I said, that look like hockey pucks. “It only takes one and three logs,” I told her. “Always three. I know you, Marjorie Thane. You’ll think that if three is good, four is better, but three’s the magic number.”  

She gets up, slides the fireplace screen to one side, tears the cellophane wrapper from a starter and throws it in; carefully she stacks three logs on top. She strikes the match, holds it to the starter, but it burns down before it ignites the puck, nearly burns her fingers. She tries again and again and again, and when, each time, the same thing happens, I realize I forgot to tell her not to unwrap the starters. Sobbing now, she stares into that cold, dark fireplace through her tears and says, “Come back, George Thane. All is forgiven.”

***